Chronicle of City's Neglect Of Williamsburg Bridge

By RICHARD LEVINE with KIRK JOHNSON

Published: June 10, 1988

For nearly two decades, engineers warned in a series of reports that the Williamsburg Bridge approaches were decaying. But New York City failed to act in time to prevent the bridge from being closed as a hazard, according to inspection documents, budget memos and interviews with state and city officials.

As early as 1971, according to reports obtained by The New York Times, officials were told that corrosion under the approaches was severe and that repairs should be made. But despite repeated inspections since then, the deterioration continued, festering virtually unchecked during three city administrations and the tenure of five transportation commissioners, eating away at once-thick girders until the hazardous roadways led to the closing of the 85-year-old bridge on April 12. Haphazard Schedules

For some of those years, the city was suffering from a fiscal crisis in which much of its physical plant, from streets to sewers and subways to schools, was starved for maintenance funds as money was spent on services deemed more essential. As a result, many of the roads, tunnels, water mains - and bridges -were allowed to deteriorate.

In recent years, officials focused on the supporting cables of the Williamsburg, at one point warning that hundreds of millions of dollars would be needed to replace the huge strands and make other repairs or even to build an entirely new bridge. On Wednesday, they acknowledged that the cables were in much better condition than they had feared and that with rehabilitation and maintenance they might last hundreds of years. Symbol of Neglect

This was just the latest miscalculation concerning a bridge that has often fooled and frustrated those charged with its care. According to the documents, haphazard painting schedules, for example, have resulted in parts of the the bridge being painted repeatedly while sections engineers had singled out as vulnerable, specifically the approach in Manhattan, went untouched for 15 years. Experts say a bridge should be entirely painted every eight years or so, with corrosion-prone areas receiving ''splash painting'' every year or two.

Meanwhile, the Koch administration steadily reduced the number of bridge workers until 1986. And in the Mayor's 10-year capital plans, which expanded as the city's fiscal health improved, the amount set aside to repair and rebuild the bridges did not rise until this year, after the Williamsburg, one of the most heavily used bridges, had already closed.

Confronted with the inspection reports, city officials said they fixed all the areas that had been designated as flags, spots that posed a potential danger. But state officials said that if the problems identified in the inspections had been repaired at an earlier and less expensive stage, they would have never become flags. The city now has procedures in place requiring those repairs without delay.

City transportation officials pointed out that no one has been killed or injured on the bridge. But the emergency closing disrupted hundreds of thousands of lives, forcing nearly a quarter of a million people to find new routes to work and devastating local businesses. The move created a new symbol of municipal neglect and raised new fears about the condition of some of the 2,000 other bridges in the city, particularly the Manhattan, which has a cable anchorage problem, among other flaws.

Mr. Koch, while acknowledging that he is responsible for the Williamsburg's closing, has blamed his predecessors and his transportation commissioners. He has also said the state inspections may have been faulty.

Officials of the State Transportation Department, which was responsible for inspecting the bridge, have blamed the city, the owner of the bridge, for failing to follow up on the problems.

No matter where the blame ultimately falls, New Yorkers will be feeling the impact of deferred maintenance on the Williamsburg and other bridges for years. Under plans announced by the city Wednesday, four of the eight lanes on the Williamsburg will be closed through at least half the 1990's, while the approaches are completely rebuilt. The Engineers And Their Inspections

On Nov. 22, 1971, an engineering consultant, Howard, Needles, Tammen & Bergendoff, filed a report with a conclusion that would echo this spring. The firm, which had been retained to study replacing part of the Williamsburg roadbed, recommended that repairs would have to be more than asphalt-deep.

''The inspection of the supporting steelwork for the approach outer roadways revealed many locations that are heavily corroded,'' the report said, noting that the worst deterioration was ''under the roadway expansion joints.

''We recommend that repair of the corroded members be undertaken at an early date.''

In 1980 - with the repairs still not made, but painted over in 1973, the last coat the approaches would receive until recently - another engineer, Ammann & Whitney, completed what it called the first thorough inspection and analysis in the history of the Williamsburg, The study included a beam-by-beam analysis of many sections of the road supports and warned that most of the beams in parts of the bridge were ''heavily corroded.''